One Amazing Weekend

This was a good weekend. A bunch of good things happened. Extraordinarily good things. Let me tell you about some of them.

On Saturday night, I found myself standing on the corner of Broadway and Lawrence, waiting for a bus to take me home. I was wearing some of my finest clothes, looking as good as my genetics and diet will allow me to look, listening to "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" on a loop, and feeling as good as I've felt in a long, long time. I felt distinctly and powerfully alive and when the bus came, I motioned it to go past me because I thought that if I got on it, I might feel somehow diminished.
I let another bus go by before I decided to stop loitering outside the Green Mill and eventually headed home.

That morning, a few unpredictably good things happened.

First, I presented my first polished, rehearsed scripted comedic scene for my boss (a well known Chicago area director and producer for my theater). I like him. I really do. Beyond his authority and experience in the theatrical community, I like him as a person. And I wanted him to be proud of my work in his class. I am his executive assistant and he's referenced me, multiple times in class. I felt a definite pressure to make sure that I was worth his approval, in this class of my peers.

Long story short, he loved it. Or rather, he liked it a lot. We got a lot of compliments from the students in the class and he echoed some of them. His notes were suggestions on ways that we could've heightened the scene, but the over-riding message was this - you boys did good work on your own, it's already very, very good, these suggestions will only enhance what you've already done. And that's a nice change. Some of the scenes in class have been a little rough.

So that was a feather in my cap. Started the day of strongly.

I also got nice compliments from the "Southern Belle, Massage Therapist, Comedienne-Who-Had-Previously-Asked-Me-Out, But-I-Had-Politely-Refused-Because I-Was-Dating-Someone-At-The-Time, And-Who-Seemed-Irritated With-Me-About-This, But-Now-Seemed-Taken-With My-Performance." So that was nice...

Immediately after that class, I went to a Playwrighting class where I read 10 - 12 five page scripts for the playwrights. After two scripts, the playwrights really took to me and began requesting me for long, complicated parts and I ended up working really, REALLY hard to make these cold readings sound polished and lively (despite the fact that I had never read them before). It was an interesting challenge and I caught myself on the break, actually being tired from the effort.

On the break, one of the playwrights approached me and shared this short, amusing anecdote. He said, "I don't know if you can tell, but I'm visually impaired. Nearly blind, actually. I was a little late to class and when I got there, you were all already reading the first script. I honest-to-God thought you were a black guy up there. A black actor. When you read the second script, I thought you were a different actor entirely and I thought, where's the black guy? It was a real shock, when I figured out that you were the same person."

In the script that he was referring to, the setting was a bar, in the 1980's, on the South side of Chicago. I played Leroy, the black, sexually-aggressive bartender, who ended up robbing an obnoxious customer and then having a threeway with his new waitress and her hermaphroditic roommate, with lines that read "Damn, bitch! You're pissin' on my shoes! Mutha fucka!"

I'm not lying. That was the script. That was one of my lines. (The hermaphrodite revealed herself to me in the men's room, by pulling out a big dick and pissing on my shoes. As those hermaphrodites will do.)

But that was pretty cool that the blind playwright absolutely bought my black character voice. Bought it 100%, piss-sodden shoes and all.

Another amazing experience came when I was selected to be one of two remaining actors to read the first act of the blind playwrights play for the second half of the class. A 42 page epic, the play was about two characters in a single scene, meeting in a college campus bar, during a blizzard. I was a undergrad at the school. The other character was an older woman, also a grad of the school. She was in town for business, visited the bar and got plastered. My character took her keys to keep her from driving drunk out into the blizzard. We engage in some intellectual foreplay, play a game of "Strip Quarters", reveal our inner fears and weaknesses and in the end, make love as the lights fade out on us, into intermission.

Although I'd never seen this script before, the cold read for it was effortless. Absolutely effortless. The narrative was smart, clear and logical. The beats of conversation flowed naturally from personal exposition to intellectual discourse to flirtatious double entendres. I began with a neutral thought that I would like this guy, this character, and if he turned on a dime and ended up killing and/or raping this woman, then I would follow wherever he lead. (Remember, I had no idea what this script was about or where all of this was leading.) And the more charming he was, to woo this woman, the more charming he was to me. The whole class was transfixed by the reading and when it was done, the applauded and cheered for us.

The teacher of the class said, "We've never had a reading like that before. It was like seeing the rehearsed play, in our minds."

Another playwright said, "I don't have any questions about the script now. Having talented actors play it, really fills in so much of the characters around the words. It was all absolutely clear to me."

And the playwright, himself, was thrilled. He said, "I had one other reading of this script before and it was a disaster. People hated the male character. Thought he was creepy. Not at all the smart, charming person that I thought that he was. He wasn't charming, until today. Today, I could really hear his voice."

A very powerful thing for a playwright to say to you about you.

After the class was done, the teacher for the class caught me in the lobby and asked me "where [my bosses] had been keeping [me]." She was impressed with the wide array of characters that I brought to the pieces and how smooth and effortless the readings were. She told me that my improv training had really paid off for me. And she asked me if I wouldn't mind reading some scripts for her. She's a playwright, herself, and she frequently has readings and performances around town and she asked me if I would do for her scripts, what I just did for her student.

I was dumbfounded by the intensity of the flattery. It had been a while since someone had been that appreciative of my performance and of course, I agreed to work for her. I would be happy to. I asked her, her name.

And she told me.

And I IMMEDIATELY knew her name.

She's a very well known, very highly respected playwright. She wrote last season's most successful play for my theater. Another one of her plays has recently been commissioned for a major motion picture. I've heard her name a million times around the theater. And we'd never met before that moment.

I was stunned. I told her that I knew who she was and that I couldn't believe that we were only, just then, meeting. And that I would be honored and thrilled, to help her with any of her projects. I pointed right at my office, at my desk, and said, "that's where you'll find me. Call me anytime you need me." We shook hands and I walked away, feeling altogether unreal.

So bizarre.

Later, when I told my co-worker, Jenn, about it, she said, "Wow. That's amazing. She's a very, very powerful person to have in your corner. I bet something really good will come from that."

Sometimes, you don't know where the opportunities will come from. I was just trying to make that guy's script sound as good as I possibly could. I had no idea that it might lead to something else. Such is the way of the world.

And that's not the end of this weekend.

Saturday afternoon, I checked my email and saw that I was confirmed for an audition with the Neo-Futurists. And I have a lovely, smart, funny idea for my audition piece that I think just might bribe them into accepting me into their troupe. (I'll spill the beans for that plan, after it happen. Whether I get cast or not. But not until after the plan goes into effect! You'll see.)

I don't know why, but I feel like I am ready to work with them. Ready in a way that I never was, before now. No audition, until this audition, could've worked. (Or did.) More on that, later.

On Saturday night, Jenn was late for the play and although I saw and stood next to, but never spoke to, the "pretty-pretty, leggy-leggy" actress that she was trying to set me up with, Jenn and I journeyed up into Evanston and saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" together and I laughed until I cried. And then I laughed some more. It's an extraordinarily funny film. Smart, funny, pathetic, sexy, hilarious, and absolutely the best thing that I've seen in a long, long time.

(Big Points to my Co-worker for Suggesting the movie. It should also be noted that she paid for my ticket, as compensation for my hasty taxi-ride to the theater for a play that we didn't get to see. She bought back a nice chunk of good karma for herself for 9 dollars and 25 cents. She rocks.)

I left the movie feeling amazingly good and looking good for "pretty-pretty, leggy-leggy", although that didn't matter. And I was humming Belle and Sebastian's "Get Me Away From Here, I'm Dying" (because it's in the movie) and that's how I found myself at the corner of Montrose and Lawrence at midnight on a Saturday, feeling human and alive.

Today was good too. Stinger rehearsal was a bit of a downer because there was business to discuss and sometimes that doesn't go well. But later tonight, I had a pizza party with Don Hall and Jenn Ellison and we watched "Walk Hard" together and we all three laughed much, much more than we thought we would've. (I easily enjoyed "Walk Hard" three times more than I enjoyed "Anchorman", "Will Ferrel's Nascar Movie" or "Will Ferrel's Ice-Skating Movie" all rolled together.) Pics of the Pizza Pie Party will be posted on my blog shortly.

And now, as I close off this particular blog post, all is good and right with the world. My computer is busily ripping CD's for my ipod, courtesy of the public library system. My dog is quietly snoring on the floor behind me. In his room, Joe is cuddled up with his new girlfriend, watching "Firefly" episodes on his computer. In honor of this important new person in his life, Joe's bedroom is clean and presentable for the first time in the 12 years that I've known him. He would move mountains (or alter a lifetime of bad habits) to keep a girl that loves him. Wouldn't we all?

Maggie has just woken up and nudged me, whining a little bit, she needs to go out back and "be a good dog". Which is fine. I need to end this blog entry now anyways. If I've been a little bit of a braggart in this entry, please forgive me. People that I barely knew, filled me up, to the brim with nice compliments and good feelings and I don't have the good sense not to share it with people. I don't think it does anyone any favors, though, to pretend like I didn't have an amazing weekend. Or keep it hidden to myself. I don't think that my good experiences dampens your own. Tell me about the good things that are going on in your world, on your blogs, and I will read about them and share them with you.

Such is the way that the world works, no?